I just don't think you can generalize and say that "deciding to leave" is a sign of fearfulness, and deciding to stand is a sign of courage. My experience has been that sometimes it's precisely the other way around.
Puppy I agree and hope that by this statement you mean that it can go either way. One or the other is not any better.
I put here a quote from another wise poster on an MLC board to illustrate: This is about standing:
Originally Posted By: pexio
It's still all about pain. You are clearly committed to your marriage and the vows you made to your spouse (and God) all those many years ago. I suspect that, due to your upbringing, abandoning that commitment and breaking your promise would cause your a lot of pain. In fact, it would cause you much more pain to throw in the towel than to endure what your MLC spouse is inflicting. Wouldn't you admit that you would feel really, really bad about breaking your vows? So you stand because it is the least painful thing for you to do.
Choices aren't made in a vacuum. All choices, even the tiniest, are made to serve ourselves FIRST and FOREMOST. We would not last long as a species if we didn't choose in our own self-interest all the time. Did you ever toss a few coins into a panhandler's cup? Why? To help out someone in need? Well, that's the secondary reason. The primary reason was because, due to your upbringing, you "felt bad" for this person and you didn't want to "feel bad". To alleviate this pain, you gave. You quite literally, paid for pain relief. And didn't you "feel good" as you walked away ('tis better to give than to receive)? We always choose, as Mark Twain said, to "content our spirit" first. The only difference between a "good"choice and a "bad" one (from a societal perspective) is that the "good" choice benefits us AND OTHERS at the same time. All people are selfish all the time.
M&H, you're right. Everyone DOES have their "uncle" point. That point is reached when the pain of the current course of action is perceived to be greater than the pain of a different course (the scale with pain stacked on both sides reaches the tipping point). It's why the MLCer chose to abandon the marriage in the first place. Their perception of the cause of the pain and the path to alleviate it are flawed because they are ill. But it is the pain they feel nonetheless. They will do what they have to do to alleviate the pain, and so will we.
